Re: Help me choose

From: xichimos (xichimos_at_plobe.com)
Date: 01/31/05 

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 02:18:49 -0600

If you are running newer hardware, the overhead of XP is more than
Linux, but what do you expect? Computers get more powerful with time, so
  they tend to throw in those extra GUI features to take up that power.
  Whether or not that is good or not is up to you.

Win2k, in my experience (used it for a few years), works fine with
games. XP is just win2k with eye-candy and better updates. You can get
a command prompt with both, but why would you want one for windows? The
windows command prompt is nearly useless.

If you want that type of text-type power, go with a linux. Matlab and
everything you want run in Linux, you might need to jump a few hurdles
for some of your games if they are older (Read: wine), but it shouldnīt
turn out that bad.

If you have the time and want the power, you can do what you want with
Linux. And if you want to try out both, it isnīt that hard to dual
boot. The installations for linux distros now a days are idiot-proof
and support is pretty good on distro-forums.

You probably get a hundred people telling you what distro to pick after
this post, so enjoy. Hope some of this helped.

I.C. Koets wrote:
> Alea iacta est; in the same way I was forced to abandon DOS, I am now forced
> to abandon W98se. My new computers hardware is no longer compatible with the
> old OS. Now I have to choose a new OS, and so far everyones' opinions are
> running counter to each other. I have a few choices, all have their own
> disadvantages:
>
> I could go with:
>
> * Windows XP. It is the current standard, so drivers and program
> compatibility shouldn't be a problem. My new machine should run it easily.
> Running with the masses makes a lot of things quite a bit easier.
> However: I tried it some time ago, and I wasn't impressed by the amount of
> overhead running. I knew how to strip 98 down to its bare minimum, but XP
> proved very resistant to such measures, and after it sat on my machine,
> smugly unperturbable, without me being able to stick my hands in the
> workings, I wiped it off. Not only that, but I have loads of DOS, W3.11 and
> W98 programs that I want to be able to run, and that didn't go smoothly at
> all. Also I got the distinct impression that XP is as open to hackers as a
> drunk whore is to sailors. If I go with XP, I'd have to find ways to get
> past these issues.
>
> * Windows 2000. Not standard, but still supported, perhaps not for long.
> Stable, businesslike.
> However: I never tried it, so I have cold feet. I heard its DOS support was
> even worse than XP's, which would disqualify it. I also heard it doesn't do
> games very well, and even though I don't game a lot, that doesn't sound
> nice. Furthermore, I have been warned that W2k is 'difficult', although I
> don't know if I'd mind that.
>
> * Some flavour of Linux. Finally free from Redmonds' shackles, open source
> software by the shipload, often for free. Great choice in different
> flavours, active community.
> However: I tried SuSe 8.2, and it really annoyed me. Buggy, complex, help
> system was useless for a novice like me [if it didn't crash on me!], I never
> got any work done on it. The only thing I ever got to work was OpenOffice.
> Hurrah. The Linux newsgroups, forums etc. weren't very helpful at all. Half
> of the scarce answers I got were of the order "That's weird. Never heard of
> it doing that before." and the other half was "RTFM". So I'm sceptical. I've
> seen other peoples' systems running well, but I don't feel like having to
> become as involved in Linux as them in order to get it to run. Knoppix
> impressed me, when I saw it on a friends box, but I am wary. Not only would
> I have to know that it has good emulators for my old software, but I'd also
> have to choose a distro, which is not trivial for a newbie like me. And then
> there is the problem that my job requires me to work with certain standard
> programs, which might not have a Linux edition...
>
>
>
>
> So here I am, stuck without enough knowledge to make an educated decision. I
> just need to get my machine running, being able to run DOS, Win 3.11 and W98
> applications (mostly CAD, Algebra software, MatLab, FEA, graph generators,
> office apps, other miscellaneous engineering and scientific software), but
> also a few games, some video and audio, and web browsing as well as a bit of
> data pumping on P2P networks. That's about it.
>
> Advise me, please!

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